There are many reasons for wrapping Christmas presents. The obvious one is to make the gift look attractive, with colorful bows and attractive wrapping paper. Another is to hide the present from view. A third is to put the recipient in a state of wonder, which can also be a state of torture. My favorite reason, and I dare to think the most important one, is so that the beneficiary can say “thank you” twice.
The first thanks is for the gift, though yet unopened, and is an expression of confidence for the giver’s assumed generosity and thoughtfulness. The first thank you disposes us for the second. The following thanks is for the gift itself, a form of thanks that will be permanently attached to the gift.
This double thanks bears a significant relationship with our life. We thank God for our life even before it unfolds, or, we might say, is unwrapped. Secondly, we express our gratitude by living a life that is worthy of the gift. Just as our gratitude for a gift demands that we take proper care of it, so, too, our gift of life demands that we fulfill our lives according to its nature.
Parents say thank to God for their new child and get to work immediately, through love and education, to ensure that the child grows and flourishes. Birthdays celebrate not only the day of birth but all that the celebrant has achieved. God gave us the gift of life. It belongs to us to honor that gift by living well.
A friend of mine donated a kidney to his son. “Thank you, Dad” was easy for the recipient to say since the gift saved his life. Unfortunately, the second thanks was lacking. Despite being advised to the contrary, the son was reckless in his diet, thereby endangering his health. The absence of the second thanks was an absence of gratitude.
In sports something called the “second effort” is highly praised. We may sometimes struggle with our initial effort, but we should not be dismayed. The second thanks often requires a second effort. In What’s Wrong with the World? G. K. Chesterton writes about “the principle of the second wind”. In everything we do that is worthwhile there comes a point where the effort seems too demanding. We need a ‘second wind’ in order to survive that moment of discouragement. “The joy of battle,” he writes, “comes after the first fear of death; the joy of reading Virgil comes after the bore of learning him; the glow of the sea-bather comes after the icy shock of the sea bath; and the success of the marriage comes after the failure of the honeymoon. All human vows, laws, and contracts are so many ways of surviving with success this breaking point, this instant of potential surrender.” The second thanks often requires a second wind.
When we wrap a Christmas present, we do so with the hope that our beneficiary is truly a beneficiary. And when God creates us, He does so with the hope that we will live out our lives in accordance with its natural inclinations, which include our desire to love, to choose what is good, the seek truth, to work for justice, and to worship God. The second thanks is gratitude in the form of putting our inaugural gift into practice.
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